Contemplating "Home"

Since writing the Samhain post about honoring my grandfather, Giuseppe, the other day, I've been thinking about the concept of "home." He moved around a lot, was an immigrant a few times over, and when I was younger I found some sense of pleasure out of the description my mother gave our family as "nomads." Yes, we have appeared to have a sort of "itch," it seems.

Since our immigrant ancestors, we've ever been on the move. At first perhaps it was due to the pursuit of better economic conditions, but is there something more? A constant search for a feeling of "rightness" and belonging?

Last night I was watching an episode of the Originals (a vampire show) and the topic of "home" popped up. Two of the characters were discussing how fiercely they would defend their right to live in their home city, and I thought, "I don't know what that feels like." To be so connected to the place where you live that you would fight to stay there. So I decided to pull some cards about it. I didn't ask a clear question, I simply held this idea in my mind as I shuffled ("What is home, and how does a lack of home impact me? How do I find home?"). I pulled:

8 of Grails/Cups - Judgement rx - 10 of Skulls/Pentacles rx

Tarot of Vampyres

The 8 of Grails was fitting, since it is a card of movement, of dissatisfaction or lack of fulfillment. It's about going on a journey. There is something here of the nomad experience. The 10 of Skulls is the quintessential "family legacy" card - what do you pass down to future generations, and what have you received from your own ancestors? It's a card a closely associated with the essence of a family's material being and presence. And in the center lies Judgement, provoking so many questions I don't even know where to begin.

I live in central Florida now, but I was born on the east coast, and spent my early years between Connecticut and Rhode Island. At about kindergarten age my natal family moved to Michigan, and for nine years I lived in one town, moving to another (very different) city for the next eighteen years. Then my husband and I packed up our things and our kids, and drove into the deep south. You might think that Michigan would have been that "home" for me, but I felt discontented there despite having lived in that state for most of my life. It didn't feel like home, though it was certainly very familiar.

And while there have been many wonderful aspects about life in our "new" state, I don't feel at home in Florida either. So I ask myself:

Will we always keep moving on in search of a place that feels right? If so, we will never provide that land-rooted legacy for our future generations; instead ours will be a legacy of the nomad, the pilgrim, the wanderer. 

And if we always search, are we destined never to find? 

Is the answer in the act of deciding to stay rooted to a place, to not move even when we feel discontented? 

Is the answer in the realization that our legacy moves within us and doesn't need to be anchored; that perhaps our legacy itself is in our movement?

Is there perhaps no answer at all? 

Perhaps this is the legacy of all immigrants who lose their connection to ancestral lands. There is something to be said for the "family oversoul" - those gentle energetic ties that connect us to our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond. As I did a cursory search of my own blog I found that for last year's Samhain post I had a "conversation" with my grandmother (who passed on thirty years ago) and the 10 of Pentacles was the heart of the draw. It's interesting that it has come up again almost exactly one year later. In the context of that post the focus was on honoring and reuniting family - the idea that home is where the largest grouping of multigenerational family is. A year ago we were considering moving back to Michigan since my mother and step-father are still there. And yet we are still here, with no plans to go anywhere anytime soon.

I sometimes imagine how our family's oversoul impacts me, us. Does my grandfather's wandering nature wield a more forceful vibration through the generational lines? His children, whose American bloodline epicenter lies in Connecticut, are now in Michigan, Tennessee, and Florida. Two of them are fairly regular world travelers. Their children are in England, New Zealand, Alaska, Saudi Arabia, Boston, Florida, California. The net is cast ever wider. Most of those are world travelers as well.

So is "home" in the people, or in the land? Is it in both? How do we recapture a sense of belonging - to each other, to a particular part of the earth? Or do we not? Do we simply restructure, rebuild, reconfigure family "legacy"? Do we start over, honoring the past and releasing it? I don't know, but I'll be sitting with this for time to come.

Samhain Blog Hop: Catching Fireflies in Glass Jars

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Happy Halloween, Happy Samhain!

Welcome to the 2014 Samhain Blog Hop! Please use the links at the top or bottom of this post to navigate through the other wonderful blogs in this circle.

Louise Underhill, from Priestess Tarot, asked us to describe (using our cards, naturally) a guest that we'd like to invite to a Samhain tea. It could be someone real or imaginary, someone known to us or someone famous. I always struggle with these sorts of scenarios, kind of like when someone asks you to name your hero, or your favorite music group of all time.

But this time I thought it would be nice to invite the spirit of my grandma Dorothy (my mother's mother) to spend some time with me on Samhain eve. I have fond memories of my grandma, though they be few in number, and connecting with her is something meaningful to me since I was never able to properly know her in life. I decided to pull three cards from my Golden Tarot deck, and in addition I, as usual, took a peek at the card at the bottom of the deck for an underlying theme or energy of the spread. 

Golden Tarot - Kat Black
U.S. Games Systems

This bottom card was: 6 of Cups. My, how fitting! Having tea with my grandmother's memory is precisely what this card is all about. I'm traveling down memory lane, remembering aspects of my young childhood, those that she was a part of…Life was certainly simpler then, and the image on this card could well be me and my sister in Dorothy's back yard, a place we spent a lot of time. The tree could be Dorothy's cherry tree; I remember the excitement with which we would pluck the fruit from its branches when ripe (even then, the notion of harvesting one's own food was great fun for me!). Now on to the central questions….

1) How would Dorothy describe herself? 2 of Cups
2) What would she like to talk about? 10 of Coins
3) What messages might she have for me? 10 of Swords

Golden Tarot - Kat Black
U.S. Games Systems

The first card filled my heart with a strong sense of understanding of the love that she carried within. Dorothy died when I was five years old. She had a difficult life, marrying twice (the first at a young age) and bearing six children across the span of it. I know that towards the end of her life she struggled quite a bit with relationships; I think she was just tired. My mom told me that when she was pregnant with me, Dorothy had told her, "I don't think I'm capable of loving any more people." But when I came into the world, she found that she was quite able to open her heart to me. I know that my grandmother adored her children, no matter how many steep obstacles she had to contend with along the way. The Two of Cups speaks to the healing and wholeness offered by love, and I hope that she has found that for herself. She is certainly still loved, even in memory.

The second card actually made me laugh a bit, oh my clever grandma….. She wants to talk about the powerful legacy of the family home, a very pertinent topic for this moment. One of the things I recall most about being in my grandmother's house was the activity. When I was a child we lived in Cheshire, Connecticut, and our own home was right next door to my grandmother's house, so there was constant communication and interaction. Many of our extended family lived nearby, so we often found ourselves playing and eating with our cousins, aunts, and uncles. I distinctly remember a group of us playing with GI Joe figurines in Dorothy's dusty attic. I remember catching fireflies in glass jars on summer evenings, and hunting for the perfect twig in the grass; if it passed inspection, an adult would tie a string to both ends to make our very own bow. I even remember tearing across the back yard on my Big Wheels trike, feeling pretty adventurous and cool. There is something special and "right" in family togetherness. Oftentimes it revolves around a central home, belonging perhaps to a matriarch or patriarch, that serves as the anchor of family unity. It's the nucleus, it is the hearth of the family heart. And it's the keeper of that precious legacy that is the root of a family's strength. We had that in Connecticut, and we don't have that now in the same way. My grandmother died long ago. We moved to Michigan and created a new life. Now I am living with my own family in Florida, and in these ways we continue to spread ourselves thin, stretching the energetic ties of our kin like rubber bands across vast stretches of terrain. Mambo Vye Zo has written about this sort of tie, the family "Oversoul", and says this about it:

Families often share an Oversoul that can have far reaching results.  If an Oversoul is something that is shared by two or more people, then a Family Oversoul is a deeper bond than mere pairing can create.  You share this Oversoul with your mother and father, as well as your siblings.  This Oversoul is the family vibe that runs through you all.  It descends from your grandparents' Oversoul or even further back, giving you a piece of their relationship with which you begin your own.

As I sit contemplating what the 10 of Coins means to me in the context of this Samhain visit with my grandmother, it is precisely this sense of our family's Oversoul that feels sharply defined, a thin yet steely vibration of ancestral connection threading its way through my deepest core. I am filled with a potent sense of urgency to relieve those deep stretches in our shared, energetic bond.

Just a few days ago my mother broached the topic of our coming back "home." Not to visit, but to stay. It's something we've thought of before, but you know how it goes - there are positives and negatives to everything, and in the end it's easier to stay put. But it goes beyond just missing each other. There is something deeper there, and the 10 of Coins feels like my grandmother's voice underscoring that topic. It's about restoring the core strength of the family, little by little. Giving our children grandparents to know intimately, to make memories with - there is no replacement for that. And there's no excuse for taking that away from them. With this card my grandmother is reminding me of what I had back then as a child, and encouraging me to make that a critical focal point as we seriously consider our next steps forward.

Photo Credit: Chantal Steyn

Not surprisingly, my grandmother's message to me is the 10 of Swords. This card, and the Death card, have been my followers of late. I know that big, at times painful, change is unfolding in my life at present. It sucks, I will be honest about that, and I'm certainly exhausted. But there's something therapeutic in catharsis. My grandmother is reassuring me of something I've sensed for a while now - that there is something new on the way. Although at times I'm not entirely sure just what it is, I do know that the only way to get there is to simply let go. Should we embrace the message of the previous card, there will certainly be some poignant 10 of Swords qualities to the transition. The truth is that there is something reassuring about knowing that all of the challenges and pain and difficulties are leading somewhere positive. That at its foundation this period is like birthing pains, that deep, primal pressure, the gasps when you start to wonder if you'll ever make it to the end….and then you do. And in that moment you realize that the fruit of your labor was so well worth it that you'd do it all over again. Yes, that is a bit what this feels like. And what a perfect meditation for Samhain, where we embrace death, rejoicing in the knowledge that a new life cycle is on its way.

So this Samhain I embrace and honor my grandmother Dorothy. I invite her to connect with me, to chat with me, to pass her wisdom on to me. I open my heart to receive her presence with gratitude and love.

Happy and blessed Samhain to you all!

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